Thousands of people took to the streets of Paris Tuesday evening to protest a spate of recent anti-Semitic attacks, including the vandalism of nearly 100 graves in a Jewish cemetery in eastern France.

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The Paris rally, in the city's central Place de la Republique, was one of about 70 staged nationwide Tuesday in response to a surge in anti-Semitic hate crimes which have triggered a deluge of outrage in France and Israel.

Eighteen political parties urged citizens to attend the protests, with Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and more than half his cabinet attending the rally in Paris.

Two former presidents, the socialist Francois Hollande, and the conservative Nicolas Sarkozy also turned up. Parliament suspended its work for several hours to allow MPs to attend the rally, while religious leaders met with the interior minister to affirm their unity.

Speaking on television Philippe said it was necessary to punish those who "because of ideology, because they think it's an easy option, because of ignorance or hostility call into question what we are -- a diverse but proud people".

Earlier in the day President Emmanuel Macron also promised to crack down on hate crimes when inspecting a cemetery in Quatzenheim in the Alsace region near Germany where 96 Jewish tombstones were spray-painted with blue and yellow swastikas the previous night.

"Those who did this are not worthy of the Republic," he said, later placing a white rose on a tombstone commemorating Jews deported to Germany during World War II.

'When one of us is attacked, we are all attacked,' says Macron

Another grave bore the words "Elsassisches Schwarzen Wolfe" ("Black Alsatian Wolves), a separatist group with links to neo-Nazis in the 1970s.

It was the second recent case of extensive cemetery desecration in the region. In December nearly 40 graves as well as a monument to Holocaust victims were vandalised in Herrlisheim, about a half-hour drive from Quatzenheim.

Macron and his wife, Brigitte, later laid a wreath at the Paris Holocaust memorial.

'Shocking' vandalism

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the "shocking" anti-Semitic vandalism, while one of his cabinet colleagues urged French Jews to "come home" to Israel.

Many French Jews are on edge after the government announced a 74 percent jump in anti-Jewish offences in 2018 after two years of declines.